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Fall restraint system wins top prize at student safe design contest

05/02/2016|www.cos-mag.com

University of Regina engineering students took home the top prize in the 2016 James Ham Safe Design Award Competition for designing an innovative, portable and cost effective fall restraint system to reduce and potentially prevent injuries and fatalities when working on trailer flat bed trucks.

The team was comprised of Ryan Schmidt, Tanner Thomsen and Marlee Wasnik.

Engineering undergraduate students at the University of Toronto — Jeremy Wang, Ryan Williams, Shuyi Wu and Noah Yang — took second prize for designing an attachment for mop wringers (the PowerWring) that can assist in preventing lower back and repetitive strain injuries in the janitorial industry.

The annual award, presented by Minerva Canada Safety Management Education, challenges Canadian university engineering students and college students in technology programs to make an original contribution toward integrating safety into engineering design. The students were recognized at Partners in Prevention Conference in Mississauga, Ont., on April 27. The winning team was awarded $3,500 while the runner-up received $1,500.

Another university team deserved an honourable mention during Minerva’s review of the submissions for this award. The University of Waterloo engineering team of Dena Arghastani, Mahdi Mahdi, Brant Wunderlich and Peter VanderMeer, conducted a very thorough hazard analysis and dispersion modelling in arriving at a design solution to mitigate and reduce the potential risk of an ammonia release from a chemical processing facility in Canada.

“Our Minerva awards committee members were very impressed with the thoroughness of all three university submissions and congratulate all these students. They will clearly be among our future champions of health and safety in the workforce,” said Minerva Canada President and CEO Tony Pasteris.

The award honours James Milton Ham whose Royal Commission Report on Health and Safety led to the creation of Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1979 and to the adoption of the internal responsibility system in Ontario workplaces.